Iraq

April Words Without Borders, Iraq, Ten Years Later Out Now

~ bythefirelight

The ever interesting Words Without Borders has an addition dedicated to Iraq, Ten Years Later

As part of our tenth-anniversary year, we are returning to the “Axis of Evil,” Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, the subjects of our first three issues. We begin with Iraq, which has just passed its own ten-year milestone, one of bloody conflict and deadly political strife rather than fiction and poetry. From the Green Zone to a tiny mountain village, in battlefield chaos and domestic upheaval, Luay Hamza Abbas, Abd al-Khaliq al-Rikabi, Muhsin al-Ramli, Sinan Antoon, Ali Bader, Hassan Blasim, Sargon Boulus, Duna Ghali, Mahmoud Saeed, Salima Saleh, and Najem Wali record not only the decade of war but its effects on the home front. In our special section, we present reportage from Iraq by Algeria’s Mustapha Benfodil and Poland’s Mariusz Zawadzki. This issue is funded in part by a private foundation.

From Arabic Literature – Iraqi Literature in Translation: A Brief Introduction

~ bythefirelight

Arabic Literature in English has compiled another one of her excellent lists on books in translation, this time Iraqi Literature in Translation.

My list is anything but comprehensive. (For instance, several authors who made the Arab Writers Union’s “Top 105″ list are not here because they haven’t been translated.) If you’re looking for more seasoned authors, check the list. If you’re looking for more young authors, visit Blasim’s “Iraq Story” website. I also recommend the anthology Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology (edited by Shakir Mustafa) and Banipal 37: Iraqi Authors, for writers who are sometimes a bit off the beaten path.

I’m still working my way through Banipal 37, but I have already come across some interesting writing. There is definitely some interesting work coming from Iraq.